Hi, I’m Missy

My work feels like the cursed result of Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Shirley Jackson attempting ethical non-monogamy under a blood moon.

I’m a queer, neurodivergent writer and lifelong collector of strange human moments. I was born in New York, shaped by a broken home, and somehow developed a deep, ongoing emotional entanglement with California. I was once immediately clocked as a New Yorker while ordering at an In-N-Out Burger, which remains one of the most spiritually significant experiences of my life. Honestly, it explains a lot. More than half my work seems to end up somewhere in California, which is either artistic destiny or a very specific fixation. These days I’m a New England transplant, slowly and somewhat willingly developing a Boston accent.

By day, I’m a nurse. My work has taken me through prisons, addiction treatment programs, refugee health clinics, and medical work in Haiti, so I have seen enough of humanity to know that horror is rarely the invention. Most of what I write is short fiction, usually circling horror, desire, memory, queer longing, and whatever is rotting beautifully just beneath the surface. Sometimes the monster is obvious. Sometimes it’s a system. Sometimes it’s a memory with excellent timing.

Representation matters deeply to me, so many of my characters are LGBTQIA+. Outside of fiction, I also write poetry and creative nonfiction, usually when life gets weird enough to demand a different container. When I’m not writing, I’m probably sitting on the floor of a bookstore, drinking tea, pulling tarot cards, eating something aggressively spicy, or turning my work into chaotic little zines.

I’m also proudly owned and supervised by Daisy, a 30-pound blue merle Australian shepherd with strong opinions about everything. My long-term goal is to find an artist deranged enough to meet me in the dark and talented enough to help me make a graphic novel. Until then, I’ll keep telling stories.